


Into Madness

by CaptainDeryn



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen, a really angsty friend reunion, except angst, look I got nothing else to add here, non-canon compliant characters, spoilers for Ziost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 05:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15678597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainDeryn/pseuds/CaptainDeryn
Summary: Tacka knew two things for certain. One: As soon as the Sixth Line’s shuttle had entered the atmosphere of Ziost it felt like he had gone underwater, the heavy weight of the planet’s darkness sitting on his chest and pushing his head under.Two: He should have known something was wrong then. He should have said something. He should have done something.





	Into Madness

**Author's Note:**

> The characters Nuri, Leiko, and Qeeo all belong to my friend skullinacowboyhat on tumblr. Thanks for letting me be mean to your kids too <3
> 
> *Spoilers for Ziost ahead. Kind of. If you squint.

Tacka knew two things for certain. 

One: As soon as the Sixth Line’s shuttle had entered the atmosphere of Ziost it felt like he had gone underwater, the heavy weight of the planet’s darkness sitting on his chest and pushing his head under. 

Two: He should have known something was wrong then. He should have said something. 

He should have done  _something_. 

He should have--

Then, as the Sixth Line donned their armor, clipped their sabers to their belts and stepped into the smoking cityscape of Ziost on the word of Theron Shan, iron bars clattered down in all their minds. He saw it, from the way Master Surro went rigid to the way Qeeo jerked beside him like she had been struck. 

He didn’t notice until the sickly-deep voice slithered into his thoughts that he too had froze, didn’t realize that something had wormed its way into his mind until it broke the gates he had shored his own darker connection the Force against. 

That gate was ripped down in one swift motion, releasing a sea of his own power that he had flinched away from years. And while he had never once before looked at it with anything but disgust, with fear, with the calmness of one standing in the eye of the hurricane he let it wash over him and thought:

_Use it. For once reach for your potential. Lose yourself in it_. 

By the time he realized it wasn’t his own voice speaking in his mind it was too late. They had already waded through civilians with vacant looks in their eyes, sabers humming. 

Digging his heels in, Tacka’s feet kept moving forward. Trying to release his white-knuckled grip from his saber his fingers gripped tight. Trying to wrestle control back of his own mind yielded only silent screams. 

In that moment Tacka knew two things;

One: Fear. Heart racing, mind skittering to a halt on all rational thought, breath seizing. 

Two: He was no longer in control. Without even fighting he had lost himself to Vitiate. 

The Sixth Line splintered, Master Surro taking some of her closest and longest standing generals by her side for some unknown mission while the rest of them were spread thin between checkpoints that had been taken by troops with the same vacant looks, hardly acknowledging their smoking blasters and stains on their armor. 

The mirialan soldier did not question the humming saber in his hand nor the door he paced in front of, eyes keen on the vacant hallway in front of him. Guards slumped against the walls, their vacant eyes empty for reasons other than the Emperor’s whispers. 

A soldier without an insignia stood by the door, a last defense should anyone approach, their shoulders back and blaster held at the ready. Their eyes were fixed on the door and nothing else, their aura burning red in the Force. 

And so the soldier with the Force twisting and warping at his will paced, and paced, and paced, listening to the whispers battering his mind and swatting with weakening swings at the hands pilfering through his deepest kept thoughts. 

At his side his saber dulled, the blade hissing out of existence as his fingers twitched against the switch.  His pacing stuttered to a halt, his hands falling heavy on the control panel for the door, fingers gripping the sides until the metal bit into his skin. 

The smallest of sounds came from the door barricaded by the remnants of a fight and his shoulders tightened, his body drawn up tall as if iron had been poured into his spine. 

\--

Nuri knew one thing, two really, and it was that Ziost was a burning hellscape, and that she welcomed the familiar presence of the imposing twi’lek by her side in the midst of so much chaos. 

Vitiate’s words continued to beat upon her mental shielding, bouncing harmlessly away but demanding more and more of her concentration as the fighting dragged on and her energy drained. She would catch Leiko grimace from time to time, shake his head as if there were irritating gnats buzzing around him and knew that Vitiate tried his viper’s words on him as well. 

The rhythm of this mission--and there had to be a rhythm, some routine to fall into or the sheer scale of horror taking over an innocent planet would bring anyone to their knees--was the same. Neutralize the threats in each level of the buildings they ascended, all to draw the Emperor to a small location on the hope that Theron Shan would be able to rig a weapon of destruction to save the suffering people on both sides. 

When the door hissed open in front of them the hallway was the same pristine walls as the others, until her eyes caught on the blaster burns and the smell of char in the air. 

From the far side of the hallway a man in armor so badly bent and charred that any insignia was lost but with an undeniable corruption tainting his life signature in the Force fired his blaster, the plasma tearing through the wall directly beside them. Neither of the warriors flinched, but both their hands drifted to their weapons, unwilling to draw just yet. 

“Jedi, how brave of you to make it this far.” the blaster bolt that fired after the first was frozen in the air, shivering and shaking with energy that had nowhere to go. “Tell me, how many of your charges have you felled to feed my power?” 

Nuri’s attention snapped to the shadowed figure by the door’s control panel, tall in the suddenly still space, the muted armor of the Sixth Line almost immediately recognizable. The voice that spoke, underneath the rumbling cadence she had begun to associate with those under the Emperor’s control the accent was almost familiar.

Before she could even formulate a response the figure turned in one swift motion, a unstable golden saber  _snap-hissing_  to life in his hand as he snarled; “But what are two more? Go ahead, give them to me.” 

Whatever held the blaster bolt released and it too burned, just catching the door frame and leaving a sizzling half-hole in it’s wake. The whine of a recharging blaster was enough to spur Leiko into action, his own blue saber hissing to life as he leaped towards the soldier, pushing them back with a wave of the Force to disrupt their firing. 

Nuri barely had time to snap her own blade up before the Sixth Line soldier was nearly on her, striking down with a vicious intensity. Shoving his blade back, she darted back a step to avoid the return sweep of the second half of his saberstaff. 

He pressed his attack and it was a vicious cycle of adrenaline and training fueled parries and offensive moves, dancing back and forth until Nuri’s heel hit the wall on a back step. Under the weight of the saberstaff making her arms scream she set her jaw in concentration and glared at up her attacker. 

Mirialan with dark, geometric tattoos laid out across his skin framing distant amber eyes that burned with an anger that didn’t seem to be his own. His growling, 

“Make you’re choice  _Jedi_. Fight or yield.” was lost on her as realization struck her through a sudden recognition of the Force signature underlying the corruption. 

_No_. 

Those tattoos, arching across his nose with the triangles, she knew those. She had been there when each had been added, been celebrating at the end of each Trial well completed. 

_No, no--_

The lines down his chin, the first change she had seen in the young boy with the olive skin and mischievous sense of humor. She knew those too.

_It wasn’t, it couldn’t--_

And the golden saber, different now, unstable but she knew the story behind that. She had heard of the single bladed lightsaber hilt on Coruscant, crushed under the heel of a dark and angry man who lashed out against the grandmaster Satele. But she knew too that crystal that had been broken, she remembered racing to the crowd of excited padawans of the basket and leaping up and down on her toes to try and snatch the softly glowing yellow crystal from the hands of her taller friend until he had produced a second, near identical crystal from behind his back. 

“Tacka!” She gasped, reeling back and yielding an inch of ground she didn’t have to yield. 

And by the stars she knew that Force presence if she dug deep enough under the corruption, if she concentrated enough on digging through years and years of different paths and what felt like hurt then she knew it. She knew it and she hated that she knew it and--

\--and there was no recognition in those glaring amber eyes, nothing except a blankness overlaid by Vitiate’s own anger. There was nothing in that whirling presence in the Force, with Vitiate’s dark tendrils strangling the life out of it and bringing it to its knees. 

While he made no move to strike down she made no move to strike against him, instead they stood frozen, horror clashing against the blankness of a mindless--no, not mindless, some part underneath the tightening vines of darkness still lashed and fought and that made it  _worse_ \-- _controlled_ puppet. “Tacka  _please_.” Despite there being nothing to base it in she reached out on a single thread of hope. “It’s me, Nuri, you don’t need to do this.” 

Something snapped and the quiet hesitance that had blanketed the angry flames broke, propelling Tacka back into action. She pushed him back in the breath of a moment of his faltering step, barely sparing a glance as Leiko jumped in, hovering around the two of them like he didn’t know where to strike, if he should strike, or even what had halted their vicious dance. 

She kept her eyes fixed on Tacka’s, hoping to see some flicker of  _something_ other than the cold distance she was met with. Even as he pressed their fight harder she tried to break through, all her words falling on deaf ears until her voice was rough and neither side had made any headway. 

As their blades crossed in an explosion of sparks all the horror that had built in her chest exploded in a cry of, “Fight it Tacka, this isn’t you!” 

There was no reasoning with him, if this even was Tacka, whatever voices the Emperor had in his head had sunk their claws too deep. In one swift motion her tactic shifted, trying to catch his blade and rip it from his hands. Even as he countered it was sloppy, followed up by sheer force to cover for it. 

Locked in a dangerous and unforgiving fight the space around them seemed to shrink, and each gouge her saber unwillingly made in his armor hurt her like a strike to herself. A control panel feebly sparked across the room and oh if she could just drive him there then maybe--

She couldn’t do it, she couldn’t strike him down, she couldn’t strike him back, each blow traded seemed to hurt her more than it hurt him and--

“Nuri!” 

She saw the strike coming for her, saw where it would land and just how little time she had to counter it, until she was pushed to stumble out of the way, blue crossing with gold in a spitting fire of two blades biting deep into each other. 

Leiko pushed Tacka back and something in the mirialan shifted, a snarl twisting his features and blows falling harder as the Emperor yanked and tangled the strings of his puppet. 

“And  _you_ my Wrath...”

Whatever else was growled fell into background noise against the clash of their weapons crossing again and again as Nuri locked her focus onto the spitting control panel, splitting across the room and slashing her saber through the metal with an explosion of spluttering sparks in its wake. 

Nothing was stopping him, even as Tacka’s chest heaved and the hair fallen loose from his ponytail was plastered across his forehead in sweat. Whatever was driving him had no intention of letting go. 

She knew what the Emperor needed, how the blood and draining life of his puppets fueled his power. 

This had to be enough. It had worked before, the shock could work again to free someone tangled in Vitate’s web. 

She didn’t want to continue to alternative. 

"Leiko drive him to the control panel!” she shouted, catching Tacka’s attention onto the realization that she had just changed the rules of the game out of his favor. They were so close to the panel, only a few more steps and it would end.

As his focus wavered his blade slipped, with Leiko’s shifting to bite into the junction of his shoulder between neck and armor. 

The cry that was driven from Tacka was untainted by the growl of the Emperor but the desperate strike he stabbed towards Leiko was not. It was batted aside easily, the backstrike of his double saber searing across another gap in Tacka’s armor, bringing him heavily to a knee. 

Nuri yanked his lightsaber from his loosened grip with a pull of the Force, sending it skittering across the room as she covered the distance between them. Leiko kept his blade leveled at Tacka, breath coming quick from the intensity of the fight. 

Tacka’s other leg gave out, sending him to the ground. His arm, bearing his weight while the other hovering trembling over the wound to his shoulder, shook, and his head was bowed. Shoulders heaving with each raw gasp for breath the dark laugh the Emperor ripped from him was raspy. When he raised his head blood ran from a cut in his lip down his chin, turning the twisted grin that was in no semblance his red. 

“Go ahead...kill him.” the words, forced between harsh inhales. “I won’t mind and I can promise you that he won’t either. If you turn away he will just keep attacking, he will continue to kill.” 

With effort Tacka rose to shaking legs, extending his arms out to the sides and baring his chest. It looked as if any second he would buckle to the floor again. “Don’t. Hesitate. Make you’re choice.” 

Eyes burning and horror crushing her chest Nuri shook her head, lip curling in a snarl at the Emperor’s influence. “I won’t kill him. You, however will  _release him_.” 

How many other of Vitate’s puppets had she freed today? How many times had she watched Vitiate’s claws be ripped out of them? Too many to count and yet as she used the Force to cave the rest of the control panel, shoving Tacka into the electric tendrils with a broken: “I’m sorry.” hurt more than the others combined. 

\--

Long after the electric bindings had released Tacka from the Emperor’s control and he had been extracted from Ziost, Nuri wondered if there had been something broken in him that couldn’t be fixed with kolto. 

When those remaining of the Sixth Line had been recalled to Tython alongside Nuri and Leiko most of them had been confined--or chosen to remain secluded--to the medbay of the shuttle. 

But even in the days, quickly approaching two weeks, since their extraction not all the Sixth Line had rebounded the way most had. Master Surro was still with the healers, working desperately to ease her fragmented mind. Others were still reeling from loss. 

Tacka, it seemed, whenever she looked in on him--desperate to see that the friend she had lost for years was finally returning--was just...gone. A shell, so far retreated into his own mind that he barely responded to anyone. Instead he fixed listless, broken eyes on the plain wall across from him, not even caring that the long, tangled strands of his hair hung in front of them. 

Eventually her duties--briefings and debriefings and meetings and everything else that was required to document exactly what had happened before Ziost had turned to ash--kept her away and it was at the most unexpected time that things turned for the better. 

She found him in one of the side clearings along the main path across the Temple grounds, hands loosely draped across his knees and taking in the sunlight. Peaking out from the collar of his grey tunic she could see the puckered scar tissue across the junction of his neck and shoulder--a permanent reminder of the battles he had unwillingly fought. 

“Tacka? I didn’t expect to see you out here.” Her tone was careful, tentative. 

When he looked up at her his eyes were weary and rimmed in dark circles, but there was no chill there any longer. In it’s place was a warm recognition. When he spoke his voice was hoarse and rough with disuse. “I was shepherded out here and left. Something about it doing me some good.” His smile faltered and his eyes dropped to the ground. 

“Nuri I...” With a grunt of effort he stood, eyes darting up to her and then back down. When he pinched the bridge of his nose she heard the hitch in his breath and whatever he had been about to say must have been lost because with a low whine of displeasure he simple shook his head and said: “I’m sorry.” 

Without thinking it through, without warding off the lump of emotion building in her own throat at seeing her long time friend up again with life in his eyes, Nuri darted forward and wrapped her arms around Tacka as tightly as she dared. “Don’t apologize.” She whispered firmly. “That wasn’t you.” 

For a moment Tacka’s arms hovered before he returned the hug just as fiercely and she felt his shoulders shaking before she realized that he was crying, his face buried against her shoulder. 

“It’s alright. You’re going to be alright Tacka, I  _promise_.” 


End file.
